The Official Venmo Blog

January 07, 2014 · by Andrew Kortina

Our mission at Venmo is to connect the world and empower people through payments. We love to see users connect when they add personal notes to each payment and share with friends, and in 2014 we hope to better serve the empowerment part of our mission.

Empowerment happens on Venmo when we recognize that money is a tool we can use to help others: sending money to a family member down on his luck, helping fund a friend's new art project, or donating to a charity like Malaria No More.

Beyond making it incredibly easy for people to give where they know a need exists, we also want to help our users discover new ways they can make an impact. To this end, we researched the top charities on GiveWell, an organization dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities.

This year, GiveWell named GiveDirectly their top charity. GiveDirectly identifies households living in extreme poverty in Kenya and Uganda, then transfers donations directly to recipients' cell phones, allowing the beneficiaries to use the money to pursue their own goals and improve their lives in the ways they best see fit.

We love the work they're doing and helped set them up with a Venmo account so that anyone can donate to GiveDirectly with just a few easy taps in our app.

You can read more about GiveDirectly here and here (they operate extremely transparently), and if you feel as inspired as we did by their work, you can donate to GiveDirectly via Venmo here:

Bonus: Good Ventures is matching donations to GiveDirectly through 31 Jan 2014, so every dollar you donate will have double impact this holiday season.